


Presentable

by DetectiveRoboRyan



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Excessive Petnames, F/F, Fluff, Set sometime pretty early in the game, Silly, This is all fluff and I'm not sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 14:39:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7226515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetectiveRoboRyan/pseuds/DetectiveRoboRyan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kallian Adaia "Flicker" Tabris hates having her hair brushed-- it hurts, she says, and anyway, the <em>last</em> time she met with an Arl, it was a wildly different circumstance, so she doesn't connect an audience with minor nobility to needing to be "presentable." Leliana is not going to stand for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Presentable

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this at 3am because I couldn't sleep and i only vaguely remember the events of this early in the game but i wanted fluff dammit so here we have fluff
> 
> flicker is so angry and so gay she's my small daughter and i love her

Leliana had never seen an elf more adverse to personal grooming than her Warden.  
  
Of course, she'd never really seen an elf, period, until the Gray Wardens came into Lothering early in their quest to fight the coming Blight, searching for recruits. Leliana had been in the area, and she had become overcome with the sensation that the Maker wanted her to go with these people, for they were demonstratedly capable and good people, so that she may help others. Some may die, true, but if it was all for the greater good, Leliana figured it was what she was supposed to do.  
  
Flicker seemed, at first and to Leliana, good, if short-tempered, loose-moraled, and sharp-tongued. She stared hard at Leliana when they first met, before shaking her hand firmly and giving her full name and then _very clear_ instructions to never call her by any name but Flicker, if they need to use names. It wasn't the best first impression, and Leliana's next impression was of her picking pockets of seemingly random targets, but still, Flicker was a good person. Good elf? No, elves were people, so "good person" was probably fine. Leliana has learned a lot about how to address elves in the time she's known Flicker.  
  
For all intents and purposes, despite the pickpocketing and general abrasiveness, Flicker _did_ truly care. She gave perhaps more than she needed to to the little redheaded boy at the bridge in Lothering, and once they got to Denerim, enjoyed stealing from the nobles enough that it was clear she was planning on giving away the stolen goods. (She said later she was going to give the fancy sword to her father if he'd let her— of course, they couldn't get into the Alienage, and out of frustration, she'd just sold the damned thing.) Flicker was a regular folk hero, stealing from the rich to give to the poor.  
  
But the life of a rogue was not the only life a Gray Warden led. Sometimes, it was necessary to be… presentable.  
  
Which was what brought them to their current predicament. Leliana recognized it as such, but it was just so unexpected, she wasn't quite able to connect all the dots.  
  
"Flicker, _please,_ get down from there," Leliana pleaded, folding her arms in exasperation as she stared into the branches of one of the trees surrounding their campsite. "We're meeting with the Arl today and it'd be rude to show up with tangled hair."  
  
"You brush your hair twice as much, then," Flicker called. "I'm not coming down. I look fine. I bathed and everything."  
  
"Darling," Leliana said, trying not to sound as exasperated as she was and failing miserably. "Dearest, beloved, keeper of my heart, love of my life and light of my soul— please let me brush your hair."  
  
She heard a rustle of leaves, and figured Flicker must be shaking her head. "Nope. Not on your life. Brush Alistair's hair. Or— oh, I'm sure Thaddeus could use some grooming."  
  
Leliana sighed through her nose, reciting verses of the Chant to calm herself down.  
  
"Kallian Adaia Tabris!" she finally called. "You are acting like a petulant child right now and I simply don't understand why you refuse to be presentable!"  
  
A rustling of leaves. Flicker hung upside-down by her knees from a low branch, her tangled mess of sandy hair dangling in the air. She glared at Leliana, though the way her lips were pouted, Leliana knew she couldn't be seriously angry.  
  
"First of all," she said, holding up one finger. "That isn't my name, it's _Flicker._ Second, the last time I visited an Arl, it was because I'd killed the bottom-feeding rapist shem he called a son (and everyone he sent at me) and he was going to have me hung. So I really don't see why meeting Arls need me being 'presentable,' don't you agree?"  
  
Leliana puffed out her cheeks in frustration. "You are impossible!"  
  
"And last I checked, you loved me for it," Flicker replied, with a cheeky grin. She swung forwards to peck a kiss on Leliana's nose, but Leliana wouldn't give her the satisfaction, and she stepped aside. Flicker's expression morphing to one of panic, she swung too far and landed flat on her back on the ground with a _WHUMP._  
  
Leliana folded her arms, smirking. "Clearly, being a city elf does not give you proficiency in climbing."  
  
"I steal," Flicker admitted. "And I climb buildings. Not trees. Give me a minute headstart and let me try again?"  
  
"Not on your life," Leliana replied, but Flicker skittered out of the way before Leliana could catch her.  
  
That _blasted_ elf. Flicker scurried halfway across the camp before getting to her feet, and then she sprinted to a tree on the other side. She had her hands on a branch and was trying to pull herself up when Leliana advanced.  
  
Leliana, who had spent the better part of her adolescence bemoaning her too-long legs, could run pretty fast if need be, and not being hampered by long Chantry sister skirts helped. Flicker made a pathetic whine when Leliana grabbed her, arms right around her middle, and hauled her off the tree.  
  
"I don't _need_ to brush my hair," she whined. "It'll hurt! It's already clean, can't we call it a day and get to marching?"  
  
"Nope," Leliana grinned. " _You_ are going to sit still and let me brush it. I can't believe it hurting is what makes you hiss so."  
  
"I have not hissed once," Flicker protested. Flicker was taller than Leliana, not an easy feat, but her skinny limbs were all scrunched up like a cat as Leliana carried her back over to the central fire pit and set her in front of one of the log benches.  
  
"You may as well be an ill-tempered alley cat, for all you've hissed," Leliana retorted, comb in hand. "Now, sit still."  
  
Flicker scrunched up her face and her shoulders alike when Leliana pulled her hair off her shoulders and onto her back. It was short, but long enough to tangle. There was a reason she usually kept it in six or so little tails. She grimaced when Leliana started brushing it, wincing at every tangle the comb hit— which was a lot.  
  
But Leliana had caught her, fair and square. Not that that was a rule Flicker lived by at all— she was a rogue and a thief at her core, and rogues and thieves lived under no illusion of things being fair. The world being so brutally unfair was the reason Flicker was who she was.  
  
It being Leliana meant an exception. So Flicker sat still, hating every minute of it. Leliana hummed as she brushed— hearing her pretty voice, music in her throat off the battlefield for once, made it not so bad.  
  
And when they arrived at the Arl of Redcliffe's estate, Flicker had her hair combed and tied off in her six or so usual little tails, only instead of in ratty twine knots, Leliana had tied them into little bows in white satin trimming ribbon.


End file.
